Romantic Advice Books: More Harm Than Good?

August 28, 1986|By CAROL LAWSON, New York Times News Service

The setting is a therapist`s office. An attractive young woman who owns her own business is lying on the couch. Tears well in her eyes as she describes to the therapist her latest romantic disaster. Once again she has become involved with a Mr. Wrong. Once again she is feeling depressed about a relationship gone awry. She reaches for a tissue and asks the therapist in a plaintive voice, ``What am I doing wrong?``

This scene is a staple of the latest crop of popular books that offers women advice on how to improve their relationships with men. As a group, they paint a picture of contemporary women that is not flattering. Written by psychologists and family therapists, they are filled with case studies of women who are successful in their careers and accustomed to achieving, but fail miserably when it comes to men.

Moreover, these same women -- the ones who carry leather briefcases and wear dress-for-success business suits -- have such low self-esteem, according to the authors, that they blame themselves, never the man, for everything that goes wrong in a relationship. And in a great many cases these women will cling to a thoroughly destructive relationship rather than be alone and without a man.

These books, two of which -- Smart Women-Foolish Choices and Women Who Love Too Much -- have been on best-seller lists for several months, raise paradoxical questions about women and about contemporary society.

-- Why, when women are climbing corporate ladders, starting their own businesses in record numbers, have more economic independence than ever and less need for a man to support them, is there such popular interest in romantic advice books that present the so-called modern woman as a relic from another era, when a woman believed she was nothing without a man?

-- Why, when women are widely believed to have growing self-confidence, is there a large audience for how-to books directed at women who do not think much of themselves?

-- Why, when openness and communication by both partners in a relationship are being emphasized, are self-help books dealing with love written for women, not men?

``These books are proof that women still have a long way to go,`` said Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. magazine. ``There has been a lot of superficial change: We can wear sneakers with our suits and we have a sense of entitlement about the professions we did not have 10 years ago. But women still value themselves positively if they have been claimed by a man. That hasn`t changed at all.``

Men do not read romantic advice books because ``on a conscious level they do not place a relationship at a high priority,`` said Melvyn Kinder, a Beverly Hills psychologist who is co-author of Smart Women-Foolish Choices with his colleague Connell Cowan. ``For men, a relationship is a given, like having to eat. Their priorities are books about money, power and being effective.``

``Women are raised to believe the most important thing in the world is to be in a relationship, and if you are not, there is something wrong with you,`` said Susan Forward, author of the recently published Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them. Forward, a former actress who is a psychologist in Los Angeles and host of a call-in show on ABC Radio, writes about women hopelessly in love with misogynous men who subject them to severe emotional abuse.

``Women are in pain -- they are hurting -- so books are selling,`` Forward said.

The author of Women Who Love Too Much also is a therapist in southern California. She is Robin Norwood, who specializes in family therapy in Santa Barbara. There are about 300,000 hard-cover copies and 1 million paperback copies in print of both Smart Women-Foolish Choices and Women Who Love Too Much.

Cowan and Kinder write that ``the more intelligent and sophisticated the woman, the more self-defeating and foolish her choices and her patterns of behavior with romantic partners.`` In her book, Norwood writes about love addiction, a ``female phenomenon`` that occurs ``when our partner is inappropriate, uncaring, or unavailable and yet we cannot give him up -- in fact we want him, we need him even more.``

``Women read these books because they are having genuine difficulties in relationships and are looking for solutions,`` said Susan Reverby, director of women`s studies at Wellesley College. ``But what they get are simple psycho- babble answers.``

``These books are superficial and fit into a long history of pop psychology, which is a big deal in our country,`` said Hannah Lerman, a Los Angeles psychologist specializing in women`s issues. ``They feed a woman`s traditional social conditioning that anything that happens in a relationship is her fault.